Re: CDR: US health care,a winner for Hillary in 04?
Perfect example of a governmental solution (socialized health care) to a government-caused problem (high cost of care). Instead of giving us more of what is killing us, why not remove the causes of the problem? Marc PS - the infant mortality statistics are bogus; they are a record-keeping artefact. Other countries (notably Sweden, to which the USA is always being compared) don't count a child as born until it has reached a certain age (three weeks in Sweden). Guess when most infant deaths occur? Matthew X wrote: The Myth of US Health Care 27 January 2003 The US has the newest medicines in world, spends more of GDP on medicine than any other nation, and yet has the highest rates for at least 10 cancer types and the highest infant mortality rate of all developed nations. The conservative politicians say socialized medicine is bad because you might have to wait your turn for some non-emergency services,
Re: CDR: Re: Supremes and thieves.
The US Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws. Marc Bill Stewart wrote: There were documents that were _going_ to become public domain soon that will now stay copyrighted for another 20 years, and one of the issues addressed by the Supremes in Eldred was whether the grant of an extra 20 years of copyright monopoly to documents that already had expiration dates assigned under the old laws was appropriate, as distinguished from granting a longer monopoly to new documents, but I thought it was established law that if something once became public domain it stayed that way.
Re: CDR: Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
Harmon Seaver wrote: It's pretty clear by now that last Spring's attempted coup and the current strike was all engineered by the CIA and the current whitehouse scum. Chaves must be a pretty decent guy if he's not rounding up all those bozos who were making the trips to DC just before the coup. You mean, not YET... Chavez is hanged by his own rhetoric, which is taken straight from Peron and all that crowd. Soak the rich rhetoric, followed by sacrifice of the middle class to keep the poor happy, then out and away before the gravy runs out and disillusion sets in. Marc
Re: CDR: Re: Supremes and thieves.
Alif The Terrible wrote: On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Marc de Piolenc wrote: The US Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws. Which has not stopped them yet. Actually, that provision has held quite well so far. I can't think of one exception...unless it's this latest copyright extension. Marc
Re: CDR: Supremes and thieves.
None of this is relevant to individuals copying works for scholarship or research. Fair Use still applies. Matthew X wrote: We learned as much on Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress can repeatedly extend copyright terms, as it did most recently in 1998 when it added 20 years to the terms for new and existing works. He wanted to publish on the Internet a number of books that should have been in the public domain by now. The people who still control most older works have demonstrated little or no interest in making them available -- and our heritage dwindles by the day. How can it dwindle? The public domain can only increase or hold steady. All this ruling does is damp the rate of increase. Marc de Piolenc
Re: CDR: Re: Petro's catch-22 incorrect (Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants)
Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: John Kelsey wrote: No policy toward anyone isn't possible once there's any kind of contact. There are terrorists who'd want to do nasty things to us for simply allowing global trade, or for allowing trade with repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia or Nigeria, or for selling weapons to countries with bad human rights records. Osama Bin Laden might not hate us, but *someone* would. Baloney. The terrorists have made it pretty clear what their gripe with the U.S. Government is, and it has nothing to do with trade, the American lifestyle, or the elusive freedoms that Americans supposedly enjoy. Right. THIS group of terrorists has made ITS beef plain. But one thing you learn about Terror with a capital T, which I've been studying since 1974, is that it has its own ideology completely separate from and independent of the nominal Cause. That is, a Muslim terrorist has more in common with a Marxist terrorist than with a rank-and-file Muslim, which explains the fact that diverse terrorist groups with seemingly irreconcilable ideological differences readily collaborate when it is to mutual advantage. By the same token, schisms in terrorist groups invariably occur based on disagreements over tactics and strategy - NOT ideology (though ideological justification is often found and proclaimed post facto). Appeasement definitely will not bring an end to terror - quite the opposite, in fact. So to the extent that Western governments pursue genuine anti-terrorist measures, they should be supported. When they implement the terrorists' own agenda by abridging the freedom of their own citizens, they must be opposed. Marc de Piolenc
Re: CDR: Polygraphs and Phrenology.
The key ingredient in successful polygraph use is a trained, experienced operator; the machine really has very little to do with detection. Unfortunately it is impossible to train a sufficient number of operators to the necessary level of proficiency for mass screening, so most polygraph users simply lower the proficiency standard and go ahead anyway... with predictable results. My favorite true story is of an Army Intel Major with the highest security clearances who applied to the CIA. The idiot who boxed him in New York for the CIA decided that he was probably concealing illegal drug use. After three retests and five interviews the folks at Langley decided he was probably okay (he was), but by that time he had decided that THEY weren't... Marc de Piolenc Matthew X wrote: Lie detectors can be fooled January 17, 2003 Lie detectors can work in specific cases, but are of little use in general screening, a study has found. The over-reliance on polygraph tests for screening can create a false sense of security that may lead to less vigilance or the relaxation of other methods of ensuring security, the committee found. (Health24)
Re: CDR: François Marc de Piolenc and US Intelligence.,
Ah - I see. You just wanted to resurrect a tired old joke. O-kay - another line in the filter... Marc NOTE FOR ATTENDANT(S): Increase Thorazine. Matthew X wrote: Okay I forgot,army intelligence is an oxymoron...lookie here arschloch...
Re: CDR: François Marc de Piolenc and US Intelligence.
And your point is? I mean, I really appreciate your posting an excerpt from my resume on the list - thereby attributing rather more importance to it than it deserves - but I somehow don't think you did it to promote my translation or editing work. Why, then? Marc de Piolenc Matthew X wrote: RELEVANT EXPERIENCE 1974 to 1980 US Army Intelligence
Re: CDR: The Culpability of the Conformist Criminal Choate.
Matthew X wrote: To Kill Or Not To Kill ' Surveys of criminologists and police chiefs show that substantial majorities of both groups doubt that the death penalty significantly reduces the number of homicides' All of which ignores the best reason for killing convicted murderers: that one will never kill again. Marc de Piolenc
Re: CDR: How Free is the Free Market?
Matthew X wrote: Debt repayment means that commercial banks made bad loans to their favorite dictators, those loans are now being paid by the poor, who have absolutely nothing to do with it, of course by the taxpayers in the wealthy countries, because the debts are socialized. That's under the system of socialism for the rich that we call free enterprise: Who's we, Professor Chomsky? I sure as hell don't call it that, nor does any free-market advocate that I know. This is simply a Socialist striking a straw man, nicht wahr? Marc
Re: CDR: Correction of Mike Rosing Disinfo.
Matthew X wrote: If you lose control, the reactor scrams. I don't recall a lot of scientific scoffing of the China Syndrome movie when it came out. When it first came out, it was considered a plausible scenario. Later, DOE ran some accident simulations at an instrumented test reactor in Idaho to induce a core meltdown. They got pretty much what later happened at Three Mile Island - significant damage inside containment, nothing outside. It also came out at almost the same time there were some problems SCRAMming a reactor that almost led to the east coast becoming uninhabitable for 250,000 years. You mean that gravity was suspended? All it takes is a momentary interruption of current to the solenoids holding the safety rods to scram a reactor. Another antinuke fairy tale. If nothing else, the 250,000 year figure gives it away. Mike joins Mongo in the Nuclear corner? I am almost embarrassed to be a cuckoo here sometimes. Barbarella is a great movie tho.Look Mike,if reactors are so bombproof why did they pull all the webpages on them? I say they are still good targets and the best way to find out is field testing with Boeings.Do you want to know more? Nobody is saying that nuclear reactors are invulnerable - only that a NUCLEAR catastrophe cannot be triggered by an airplane. As somebody has correctly pointed out, the powerhouse and spent fuel pools (the latter the result of antinuke campaigns against reprocessing) are vulnerable. It certainly is possible to put a reactor out of action by destroying everything outside containment. Marc de Piolenc
Re: CDR: Desert Rats
Matthew X wrote: There's an interesting book about a behind the lines operation that may have stopped Rommel breaking through at Al Alemain. Some guy called,'poppy.' and a few local arabs set off a huge gas depot and the German tanks ran out of fuel.This is from ... That's Popski. Real name Vladimir Peniakov. A British subject who formed a kind of Rat Patrol to operate behind German lines in the desert. In his own memoirs, Popski's Private Army, he does not claim to have had such a significant effect on major operations... Marc
Re: CDR: Re: Codetalking in the South Pacific?
The ones we used to hear on the shortwave in Europe were enciphered transmissions to agents from their controllers. Most of the numbers broadcasts originated in the East Bloc, but there's no reason to suppose that the West didn't use them for agent communications as well. At least in the Russians' case, the cipher keys were one-time pads issued to the agents in personal meetings or through dead drops - a key element of vulnerability in their networks. Marc de Piolenc Tyler Durden wrote: Oh yeah, another thing I wanted to ask about, before I forget. It's somewhat well-known that throughout the South pacific, there are radio stations that do nothing but broadcast the real-time reading of number sequences, but no one seems to know just why.
Re: Tax consequences...
Nomen Nescio wrote: So what you are suggesting is that I might as well take out US citizenship, since the IRS behaves just as piratically and imperially to anyone who gets a job in the US? Considering only taxes, I think that's correct. You do need to consider other things, such as what happens to your citizenship in your native country if you are naturalized in a foreign country. Some governments don't care, while others will treat you as an alien when you return. As for the IRS: Your green card status means you have put yourself squarely in their sights. Giving up the green card apparently doesn't get you immediately off the hook, as they will still try to tax you like a citizen. I recommend getting advice from a good US tax ATTORNEY (not a tax preparer, who is basically an IRS employee paid by you), without disclosing your SSN or any other identifying numbers even to him. You also need to find out about tax treaties between your native country and the US. So much for legalities (which the IRS tends to ignore anyway, when they don't suit them). Tactically, you have probably already disclosed certain things to the IRS, and have immovable and illiquid assets within their reach that are identifiable with you. You have to weigh the advantages of simply moving offshore and telling them to pound salt against what they can grab when/if you do so. You may find you need a period of preparation during which you make your assets less vulnerable and/or less easy to trace to you. Marc de Piolenc -- Remember September 11, 2001 but don't forget July 4, 1776 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Re: CDR: Tax consequences of becoming a US citizen
Nomen Nescio wrote: Are you saying that if someone is legally resident in the US for a while, the US IRS will attempt to get his assets all over the world forever? I find this hard to believe. Not necessarily get them, but tax them. Believe! Marc de Piolenc -- Remember September 11, 2001 but don't forget July 4, 1776 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Re: CDR: Tax consequences of becoming a US citizen.
Basically, none. A US resident is taxed just like a citizen. In fact, even if you are not a green card holder, but have a substantial presence in the US, you are still taxed like a citizen. Marc de Piolenc An Metet wrote: What are the tax implications of a US resident green card holder, with substantial assets both in his original nation and in the US, of becoming a US citizen? -- Remember September 11, 2001 but don't forget July 4, 1776 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Re: CDR: 'Enigma' reviewed in Salon.
Ultra originated in Poland, not Britain. The wartime decryption work was of course carried out in Britain, but without the prewar seed work of the Poles it would probably have been futile. Marc de Piolenc matthew X wrote: It's not the great movie yet to be made on the subject, but I'm sure I'm not the only one grateful to the makers of Enigma for placing the credit for breaking the German code back it belongs: with the British. After the cultural theft perpetrated two years ago by U-571, this modest restoration feels like an act of decency. -- Remember September 11, 2001 but don't forget July 4, 1776 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Re: CDR: Re: overcoming ecash deployment problems (Re: all about transferable off-line ecash)
A. Melon wrote: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 06:59 AM, Mike Rosing wrote: But the reason we have AC today is because Tesla requested no royalties on his motor/generator. Something for Brands to think about. No, we have AC because AC works better than DC in home wiring situations. Hmmm. I always thought the reason we went with AC was because at the time, DC power couldn't cut it. They couldn't find any way to reliably transfer DC power more than a half mile or so from the power plant, and when trying to demonstrate it in NYC couldn't even get DC power all the way up a multi-story building. You're saying the same thing. AC works for transmission over long distances because it can be cheaply stepped up in voltage for transmission to minimize losses, then stepped down again for safe domestic use. We now have machinery that does that fairly cheaply for DC, but it's still more expensive than a simple transformer with the same capacity. Long range transmission line are now often high-voltage DC, to take advantage of higher average power at a given peak voltage; it is now possible to efficiently reconvert to AC at the end. In Edison's day that was not so. If his commutated DC generators generated 32 volts (and high-voltage DC generators would have been very difficult to build in those days), that was the transmission voltage, and you had to have a powerplant on every block. What held up AC as a distribution format was the absence of practical AC motors - Tesla broke that logjam, asking little in return, and the rest is history. Marc de Piolenc
Among the Bourgeoisophobes
Among the Bourgeoisophobes Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/102gwtnf.asp -- Remember September 11, 2001 but don't forget July 4, 1776 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Re: CDR: Julia Child was a Spook
Nonsense. If you can't see any difference between terrorists and résistants you are either wilfully ignorant or confused. A terrorist strikes symbolic targets, preferably undefended ones. A résistant strikes at the occupying power. Of course it is possible for one and the same person to be both - it is behavior that defines the terrorist. So when an al-Quaida member takes on a US patrol, he may define himself as some kind of soldier in that encounter. It doesn't change the fact of his complicity in the murder of innocents, which makes him a terrorist as well. Marc de Piolenc Major Variola (ret) wrote: http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/apr/spies/index.html [Ed: amusing that sleeper agents who infiltrated occupied territories are glorified by the winner of that conflict.. but when the US is the occupier, the resistance agents are terrorists..]
